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This paper presents a model of strategic buyer-seller networks with information exchange between sellers. Prior to engaging in bargaining with buyers, sellers can share access to buyers for a negotiated transfer. We study how this information exchange affects overall market prices, volumes and welfare, given different initial market conditions and information sharing rules.

There is a close link between prices of equity options and the default probability of a firm. We show that in the presence of positive expected equity recovery, standard methods that assume zero equity recovery at default misestimate the option-implied default probability.

We document the outcome of an options decimalization pilot on Canada’s derivatives exchange. Decimalization improves measures of liquidity and price efficiency. The impact differs by the moneyness of an option and is greatest for out-of-the-money options.

In order to understand what drives aggregate fluctuations, many macroeconomic models point to aggregate shocks and discount the contribution of firm-specific shocks. Recent research from other developed countries, however, has found that aggregate fluctuations are in part driven by idiosyncratic shocks to large firms.

The primary focus of this paper is to study conflict of interest in the brokerage market. Brokers face a conflict of interest when the commissions they receive from investors differ from the costs imposed by different trading venues.

We assess the importance of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) in Canada using both firm- and worker-level microdata. In particular, we analyze employer-level administrative data from the Major Wage Settlements (MWS) and household-based survey data from the Survey of Labour Income Dynamics (SLID).

Despite the US unemployment rate being close to estimates of the non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), measures of underemployment remain elevated, which could be an indication of remaining labour market slack. The shares of involuntary part-time workers and long-term unemployment are high relative to the current stage of the business cycle, suggesting available labour inputs are being underutilized.

In this note, we provide a brief outline of the recent developments in wage measures in Canada. We then assess whether wage growth is consistent with its fundamentals.

This report investigates how the markets for repurchase agreements and securities-lending agreements support the liquidity of Canadian bond markets. It also discusses how recent regulatory changes, as well as low interest rates and settlement failures, are potentially affecting securities-financing markets and, as a result, bond market liquidity.

The article examines the extent of downward nominal wage rigidity in Canada and its implications for monetary policy. The authors ask whether its existence is a sufficient argument for a higher inflation target if concerns about the effective lower bound are adequately addressed.